Growing up in London, the actress Naomi Ackie was so shy that her family didn’t realize she could sing until they saw her in a school production of Lionel Bart’s 1960 musical, “Oliver!,” when she was 15. “I was belting out these huge songs, and they were in so much shock,” she says from her home in southwest London. “I was like, ‘Look, when you guys leave the house, the walls tremble. As soon as you’re back, I’m quiet as a mouse.’”
For Ackie, 34, acting has always offered “a controlled space” in which she could transcend her natural timidity. “I could be assertive,” she says. “I feel very immersed in the moment between ‘action’ and ‘cut.’” Still, her best performances tend to be understated. Her first major role, after graduating from North London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2012, was a terrified, silent housemaid in the movie director William Oldroyd’s 2016 “Lady Macbeth.” Earlier this year, she won an Independent Spirit Award for her portrayal of Lydie in Eva Victor’s crushing indie film “Sorry, Baby” (2025). She plays her character — the best friend of a woman coming to terms with a sexual assault — with a quiet, unwavering kindness that seems to glow from within. Directors, she admits, “always have to tell me to speak up. I never want to add anything that feels superfluous. I think it’s because part of me is just a bit embarrassed to be an actor.”
This month, however, Ackie is taking on a bolder role in the director Boots Riley’s absurdist sci-fi film “I Love Boosters,” about thieves who steal luxury clothes to sell at affordable prices to working-class people. She signed on, she says, in part because of the movie’s anticapitalist message: “It’s about community and fighting the man.”
Later this year, she’ll play the female lead — a Dr. Frankenstein-esque biotech C.E.O. — in DC Studios’ “Clayface.” Together the two projects could add up to a breakthrough moment for the actress but, after her turn as Whitney Houston in the 2022 biopic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” failed to yield the reception it promised, she now approaches hype with caution. “I cannot and will not put myself under that much pressure for a job ever again,” she says. “The outcome is the outcome.” But the buildup and subsequent letdown, while disappointing, ultimately empowered her. “Acting doesn’t scare me right now, which is interesting,” she says. “I like feeling a little scared.”
Makeup: Kenneth Soh at A-Frame Agency using Violette_FR. Photo assistant: Tristan Bejawn
